Weekday evening programming on the largest cable and broadcast news outlets almost completely ignored a long-standing Medicare privatization scheme favored by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) in the days since he first resurrected the idea of radically reshaping the American health care system toward for-profit interests.

During a November 10 interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, Ryan misleadingly claimed that due to mounting “fiscal pressures” created by the Affordable Care Act, the Republican-led Congress would be forced to engage with what Baier called “entitlement reform” sometime next year. Ryan falsely claimed that “because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke” and that the popular health insurance system for American seniors will have to be changed as part of any legislation to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s health care reform legacy. From Special Report with Bret Baier:

According to a Media Matters analysis of broadcast and cable evening news coverage from November 10 to November 27, Ryan’s plan to privatize the nationwide, single-payer health care coverage currently enjoyed by millions of seniors has gone unmentioned on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News. Ryan’s so-called “premium support” plan was briefly mentioned on the November 22 edition of PBS NewsHour when co-host Judy Woodruff pressed President-elect Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, as to whether Trump would accept Ryan’s privatization proposal. By comparison, during the same time period, MSNBC ran six prime-time segments exposing Ryan’s privatization agenda:

According to a July 19 issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation, conservative lawmakers are likely to pursue “a proposal to gradually transform Medicare into a system of premium supports, building on proposals” adopted by Ryan when he served as chairman of the House Budget Committee. These so-called “premium supports” would provide each Medicare beneficiary with a “voucher” that can be used for the purchase of private health insurance; they represent “a significant change from the current system” that pays health care providers directly for services rendered.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) pointed out last July, claims that Medicare is “nearing ‘bankruptcy’ are highly misleading,” and Ryan’s specific charge that Medicare is “broke” because of the ACA is completely wrong. President Obama’s health care reform law greatly improved Medicare’s long-term finances and extended the hospital insurance trust fund’s solvency by 11 years.

The looming fight over the future of Medicare, which serves over 55 million beneficiaries and accounted for 15 percent of the entire federal budget in 2015, has been well-documented, but it has garnered almost no attention on major television news programs.

Millions of Americans who rely on broadcast and cable evening news are completely unaware of the stakes in this health care policy fight. They are also unaware that Ryan’s privatization scheme would leave millions of retirees at the whims of the same private insurance market that right-wing media are currently attacking because of increased rates.

Methodology

Media Matters conducted a Nexis search of transcripts of weekday network broadcast evening news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS and weekday prime-time news programming (defined as 8 p.m. through 11 p.m.) on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC from November 10, 2016, through November 27, 2016. We identified and reviewed all segments that included any mention of “Medicare.”

A new report from The Washington Post cites recent IRS filings to confirm previous allegations that President-elect Donald Trump’s private charitable foundation engaged in illegal “self-dealing” activities, a story Fox News originally ignored when Trump was the Republican presidential candidate.

On November 22, The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold reported that the Trump Foundation’s newly available tax filings confirm earlier reports that the foundation had engaged in illegal “self-dealing.”

Fahrenthold wrote that the foundation’s 2015 filings -- which were made publicly available on the evening of November 21 -- reveal that the foundation had “transferred ‘income or assets’ to a disqualified person,” which could be Trump himself “or a member of his family or a Trump-owned business.” Another section of the filing also revealed that the foundation had checked “yes” to indicate it had “engaged in any acts of self-dealing in prior years.”

As explained by the Post’s report, these transfers violate “a legal prohibition against ‘self-dealing,’ which bars nonprofit leaders from using their charity’s money to help themselves, their businesses or their families.”

Fahrenthold first reported on this suspected illegal activity in September. As explained when Fahrenthold originally broke the story, Trump spent $258,000 from the Trump Foundation -- to which he has not personally donated since 2009 -- to settle legal issues involving his for-profit businesses, which Fahrenthold noted on CNN “is against the law.”

At the time, the Trump campaign denied the allegations, claiming that Fahrenthold’s report was “peppered with inaccuracies and omissions” and that “there was not, and could not be, any intent or motive for the Trump Foundation to make improper payments.” (The statement offered no examples of any inaccuracies in Fahrenthold’s reporting, nor did subsequent surrogates who claimed the reporting was “debunked”.)

In the day following this breaking story, Fox News devoted a total of just under three minutes to the report, substantially trailing CNN and MSNBC in total coverage. Its flagship evening program, Special Report with Bret Baier, led the network’s race to the bottom in terms of covering the story, devoting just 12 seconds to reporting on the alleged “self-dealing.”

A Media Mattersanalysis found that Fox News’ segments on the Post report also offered few details on the investigation. The longest segment Fox devoted to the report was one minute and 41 seconds on The O’Reilly Factor, in which guest host Bret Baier allowed Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway to dismiss the report uninterrupted for a full minute.

Fox News featured a discussion with Special Report anchor Bret Baier about the "controversy" surrounding President-elect Donald Trump's pick for chief strategist, Stephen Bannon. Baier and Happening Now host Jon Scott covered Bannon's "call for Paul Ryan to be removed as speaker," but not Bannon's embrace of anti-Semitism and white nationalism.

Baier characterized Bannon as "someone who, from the outside, … wanted to take down the Republican Party," and Scott noted that Bannon "called for ... the ouster of Paul Ryan." Baier added that Bannon "does come with a lot of controversy" and has "stoked real concerns, especially on the left." Their vague language obscures the reality of what makes Bannon so controversial. Under Bannon's tenure, Breitbart News ran multiple atrocious headlines such as "Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew" and "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive And Crazy." Bannon himself trumpeted Breitbart News as "the platform for the 'alt-right'," and Breitbart dutifully helped boost Trump's chances in the election. Furthermore, Bannon encouraged the Trump campaign to incorporate bigoted "alt-right" beliefs and policies into their platform, to the delight of white nationalists. But Baier and Scott found none of this "controversy" worth mentioning. From the November 14 edition of Fox News' Happening Now:

BRET BAIER: Steve Bannon is someone who, from the outside, wants to -- wanted to -- take down the Republican Party -- and made no bones about saying that. So you have the guy who embodies the Republican Party and the guy who wanted to take down the Republican Party working together inside the Trump White House.

[...]

JON SCOTT (CO-HOST): Stephen Bannon's title, chief strategist. … He has been a Navy officer, he was, as we mentioned, head of Breitbart News, he's been an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. But he also, as you pointed out, called for Paul Ryan's elim -- you know, stepping down, the ouster of Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus are very close, like this. It's an odd combination, sort of like President Lincoln's team of rivals.

BAIER: Well, that's right, and I think that the structure in the campaign seemed to work for the Trump campaign and that's why you put Bannon in there in this role to provide some cover from the Trump folks who would worry that he was automatically being absorbed into this establishment structure inside Washington. However, Priebus is right -- you need relationships up on Capitol Hill to get stuff across the finish line. There is an excitement on the Republican side that they are going to get a lot done, quickly, and it's going to tick down, and in order to do that orderly, you have to have some relationship on the inside and up on Capitol Hill.

SCOTT: So if you've got a Republican-led House and Senate, nobody is going to be able to help you get legislation passed more quickly than the guy who up till now has headed the Republican National Committee.

BAIER: Exactly. And you’re going to have those inside conversations. He’s going to be able to say which trains come on the tracks, you know, get into the oval office -- that's the chief job of the chief of staff is who gets in to see the president. But Steve Bannon, much like David Axelrod in a strategist role inside the White House, not only puts you close to the president but also prevents, perhaps, him from running this movement on the outside to take down the Republican Party. Whether that was a serious thought of why he was chosen, we don't know. I will say this: He come with a lot of controversy, a lot of things he has said before, a lot of things that online has come out of Breitbart has really stoked some real concerns, especially on the left, and they'll have to deal with that as they get ready to take office January 20th.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s seemingly bombshell reporting about the Clinton Foundation and a "likely" indictment regarding Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, which was based on two unknown sources, collapsed within days when the anchor admitted he’d made a “mistake.”

By the time Baier walked back his comments, his claims had already been parroted by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Fox hosts and correspondents, right-wingblogs, and some mainstream outlets like The Hill.

While Donald Trump’s own campaign manager Kellyanne Conway admitted that the story was wrong, she celebrated that “voters are hearing it” and "the damage is done." Therein lies the massive problem.

Baier made more than a "mistake." And if you need more evidence that Baier's Friday apology wasn't enough, look no further than Fox & Friends Saturday, where discredited conservative journalist Ed Klein touted dubious reporting to suggest that Clinton will likely face an indictment if she’s elected president. What’s more, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume tweeted on Saturday morning that “Fox News stands by Bret Baier's key finding: that the FBI [investigation] of the Clinton [Foundation] is open & active.”

Following the backlash from Bret Baier’s false smear about an impending Clinton indictment, and the doubling down from Fox News, I’m urging Fox News to take these additional steps to correct this miscoverage as soon as possible:

1)Fox News should fully retract Baier’s initial report. While Baier issued an apology that effectively walked back his three major claims, Fox should fully retract the report.

2)Fox News should devote the same amount of time to running Baier’s apology as it did to his faulty reporting. The network spentmore than two hours of coverage and devoted at least 41 segments over a 24-hour period to Baier’s faulty reporting. This amounts to nearly 12 percent of the network’s total live airtime.

3)Fox News should re-air its correction on Baier’s show, Special Report, and on The O’Reilly Factor, the network’s most watched show. Baier has yet to apologize on his own show. After years of convincing its viewers that all other news outlets are biased, there stands the very real possibility that the only place Fox viewers are likely to see Baier's apology is if it airs on Fox News. If the network will not devote equal time to the correction as it gave to Baier’s faulty reporting, then it should ensure the correction is seen by as many viewers as possible.

To ensure that the above happens, Media Matters for America will be running a media awareness campaign online to make Fox viewers aware of Bret Baier’s serious reporting transgressions.

Fox News returned to pushing reporting that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is likely to face an indictment less than 24 hours after the network apologized for making the claim.

On November 2, Special Report anchor Bret Baier claimed that according to anonymous sources, FBI investigations into Clinton would “continue,” that “there is a lot of evidence,” and that “barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.” Fox heavily hyped Baier’s reporting in the following days. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his campaign also picked up Baier’s reporting and used it to attack Clinton. However, non-Fox media outlets soon debunked Baier’s reporting, saying it was “wrong” and “just not true.”

Baer subsequently issued an apology for his reporting on November 4, saying that his reference to a “likely” indictment was “a mistake” because “no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It is obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to a grand jury.”

However, Fox News is now back to touting dubious reporting that Clinton will likely face an indictment if she’s elected president.

Discredited conservative journalist Ed Klein appeared on the November 5 edition of Fox & Friends Saturday and claimed that his “sources are telling” him that “there’s a very good chance that if she’s elected president on November 8th, by the time inauguration comes around, [FBI Director James] Comey will have recommended an indictment.” Klein continued that there would be a “constitutional crisis” because the attorney general would not “accept his recommendation for indictment.” Taking Klein’s claims seriously, co-host Clayton Morris wondered if vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine would then become president when Clinton is indicted, and co-host Abby Huntsman told Klein they “learned a lot from you this morning.”

Klein has a long history of sloppy and inaccurate reporting about the Clintons. Reporters from across the political spectrum have called his work "junk journalism," "devoid of credibility," "suspect," "fan fiction," "lazy, cut-and-paste recycling," "strewn with serious factual errors, truncated and distorted quotes," "thoroughly discredited," "smut," "sordid," "poorly written, poorly thought, poorly sourced," and "bullshit." Klein had lunch with Donald Trump in May and said that he’s known him for 35 years and has "met with him on numerous occasions, talked to him on the phone countless times, traveled with him, and written two lengthy magazine cover stories about him."

ED KLEIN: Here’s what my sources are telling me. They’re saying that there’s a very good chance that if she’s elected president on November 8th, by the time inauguration comes around, Comey will have recommended an indictment of the president-to-be.

CLAYTON MORRIS (CO-HOST): That’s what your sources are telling you?

ABBY HUNTSMAN (CO-HOST): Wow.

KLEIN: Yeah. And it would be a constitutional crisis of enormous proportion --

HUNTSMAN: -- [inaudible] we’ve never experienced before.

KLEIN: -- because the attorney general with, of course, the president’s backing, is not going to accept his recommendation for indictment. So there’ll be this titanic battle between the FBI on the one hand, the attorney general and the White House on the other hand, just before the inauguration.

MORRIS: You play this all out historically. She becomes president. She actually takes the -- puts her hand on the Bible, becomes president. The vice president then, maybe, Tim Kaine becomes, takes over? This would be remarkable.

KLEIN: I was thinking, she becomes president and what if she becomes debilitated for reasons of health? That’s the other aspect of this nobody ever discusses. Are we going to get the goofy Tim Kaine as our vice president moving in or will we have Bill Clinton behind the scenes being a kind of Edith Wilson-like when Woodrow Wilson had his stroke?

On November 2, days before the presidential election, Fox host Bret Baier cited two anonymous sources to issue three explosive claims: The FBI is currently engaged in a “very high priority” investigation of “possible pay-for-play interaction” between Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation that is uncovering an “avalanche” of evidence; the FBI believes with “99 percent accuracy” that Clinton’s private email server was hacked by at least five foreign intelligence services; and that these investigations “will continue to likely an indictment.”

Baier’s original reports were based on “two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation.” In the 24 hours following his initial claims, Fox gave the story more than two hours of airtime, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump trumpeted the story on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, severalothernetworks debunked Baier’s reporting. But according to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, even if Fox’s reporting is wrong, “the damage is done to Hillary Clinton” and the facts don’t “change what’s in voters’ minds right now.”

Below is a comparison of Baier’s original reports, his apology statement this morning, and reporting from other networks.

The Clinton Foundation

Baier’s Original Reporting

Baier repeatedly hyped the magnitude of the Clinton Foundation investigation, calling it “a quote ‘very high priority’” and saying agents “had collected a great deal of evidence,” with “an avalanche of new information coming in every day.” He claimed that the investigation is “far more expansive than anybody has reported.”

From the November 2 edition of Special Report:

The Clinton Foundation investigation is a quote "very high priority." Agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people about the foundation case, and even before the WikiLeaks dumps, these sources said agents had collected a great deal of evidence. Pressed on that, one source said quote "a lot of it". And there's an avalanche of new information coming in every day -- some of it from WikiLeaks, some from new emails.

The agents are actively and aggressively pursuing this case. And they will be going back and interviewing the same people again -- some for the third time.

Also from the November 2 edition of On the Record:

BAIER: Here's the deal. We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of what's going on with these FBI investigations. A couple of things, one, the Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported, I think, so far.

[...]

Three, the Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence that they have as quote “a lot of it.” And there is an avalanche coming every day with WikiLeaks and the new emails. They are quote "actively and aggressively pursuing this case."

Baier’s Apology

In his apology, Baier said only that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation is “continuing” and that it’s a priority “for those investigators working it.” He nonetheless claimed to “stand by the sourcing on the ongoing active Clinton Foundation investigation” and that Fox is “working to get sources with knowledge of the details on the record.”

Other Reporting

ABC News reported that “there has been no change in posture” for the investigation since February, when “prosecutors and senior FBI officials agreed there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing, and that a criminal case tied to the Clinton Foundation could not be made.”

NBC News’ Peter Williams reported that “FBI officials tell me there's been virtually no movement” on the Clinton Foundation inquiry “for the last several months.”

The Clinton Email Server

Baier’s Original Reporting

Baier originally claimed that “we have learned that there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked and that it was about a 99 percent accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and they believe that things had been taken from that.”

Baier’s Apology

In his apology, Baier admitted that “I was quoting from one source about his certainty that the server had been hacked by five foreign intelligence agencies. And while others believe that is probable because of the confirmed hacking of email accounts Secretary Clinton communicated with, as of today there are still no digital fingerprints of a breach no matter what the working assumption is within the bureau. All the time, but especially in heated a election on a topic this explosive, every word matters, no matter how well-sourced.”

Other Reporting

Williams reported that there is “no such view” of hacking at the FBI, which has “concluded they couldn't know for sure, but they found no positive proof of any successful hacks.”

A Possible Indictment

Baier’s Original Reporting

In his On the Record appearance, Baier said that the “investigations will continue. There is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.”

Baier’s Apology

In his apology, Baier said that his reference to a “likely” indictment was “a mistake” because “no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It is obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to a grand jury.”

Other Reporting

ABC News reported that the indictment claim was “inaccurate and without merit.” NBC’s Williams reported that “this idea that there are indictments near or something like that, I am told is just not true.” And according to CNN, Baier’s use of the word indictment was “wrong” because “there is no evidence ​that any ​of the Fox ​stuff is true. That there is nothing close to an indictment. “

Fox News devoted more than two hours of live coverage over one day of programming to Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s anonymously-sourced reporting that included explosive claims about both the FBI’s investigation into a “pay-for-play” relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s office as secretary of state and their investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. Three other networks have debunked and disputed the claims Baier made based on their own sources.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier made a massive face plant on his now-debunked report of a forthcoming indictment as part of supposed FBI investigations related to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Yet fellow journalists are giving Baier a pass because he is a “solid reporter” and a “real journalist.” To the contrary, Baier is part of the cadre of so-called “hard news” Fox reporters who frequently peddle conservative misinformation under the guise of “straight news,” and his latest “indictment” error is not simply a one-time slip up.

Baier seemingly stunned the political world on November 2 when he cited anonymous sources to claim that FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state found an “avalanche of new information coming in every day” that would lead to “likely an indictment.” The claim quickly made its way to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who said the FBI investigation “is likely to yield an indictment.”

Less than 24 hours after the initial claim, however, Baier partially walked back his “inartful” and flawed report, saying it was wrong for him to “phrase it like I did.” Later that day, ABC News and NBC News poured cold water on Baier’s report, and NBC’s Pete Williams reported that “there really isn’t” an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and that “this idea that there are indictments near … is just not true.”

Yet despite Baier’s botched reporting, some journalists claimed Baier’s inaccurate reporting was a one-off error. CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota held Baier up as “a real journalist,” saying, “He’s not Sean Hannity. … Bret is a real journalist,” suggesting that his latest miscue was out of character for him. Fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo also suggested that it was Baier’s sources who were at fault, not he, because Baier is a “solid reporter” who shouldn’t be “assail[ed]” for being misled.

Baier’s bungled report is indeed an example of terrible journalism, but he hardly has an otherwise-clean slate of “solid” and honest reporting.

In addition to all of this, Baier has not even fully retracted his false reporting on Clinton and the FBI, doubling down on November 3 despite the debunking from other outlets.

So no, Bret Baier is not a “real journalist.” He is a right-leaning Fox News reporter who exploits the facade of his “straight news” evening show to peddle conservative misinformation, and his latest “indictment” misfire is part of an ongoing trend.

Right-wing media outlets are parroting the attacks of an anti-LGBTQ hate group on Connecticut’s openly gay comptroller, Kevin Lembo. Lembo recently sent the American Family Association (AFA) a letter asking the group to submit written documentation certifying it complies with the nondiscrimination regulations governing the Connecticut State Employee Campaign for Charitable Giving (CSEC), which allows Connecticut State employees to contribute to qualifying non-profit charities through payroll deductions. Lembo’s office has since been “flooded” with emails and phone calls from AFA supporters.